Booting Coyote Linux from a CD-ROM

Overview

This is an involved process and requires some hacking on a full Linux system to create the boot CD. Something to keep in mind is that the configuration of such a system cannot be updated; you are creating a CD-ROM, as in "Read Only Memory". All of your configuration options, port-forwarding, or script modifications must be completed and tested before you create the CD. You don't need an IDE-enabled kernel to make this work, as it merely takes advantage of the BIOS-enabled ability of many computers to boot from a CD.

Following are three sets of instructions. The first is the most recent, and has been tested with CL2.x The other two were provided for CL1.x, and will probably not work for CL2.x. They are included here as resources in case the first method doesn't quite work for you. If you have questions or problems with any of this, please use the Coyote Linux forums. I didn't write any of this, so please don't ask me for help. I am interested in corrections or clarifications, however.

Method 1

What do you need ?

A WORKING Coyote Linux 2.0 floppy

A system that meets Coyote's specs, with a CD drive capable of reading and booting from CD-RW or CD-R media.

A working full-distribution Linux system (capable of manipulating tar gzip files).

Modify syslinux.cfg, changing boot=/dev/fd0,vfat to boot=/dev/hdc,iso9660. This assumes that your CD-ROM is the master on the secondary IDE interface; change it to /dev/hda if it's master on the primary interface, etc.

Extract cdrpack13.zip to a dir like c:\cdrpack13 and extract multi_memdisk_addon.zip to that directory.

Copy coyote2.img to c:\cdrpack13\cds\multi_memdisk\disk1\isolinux

Modify c:\cdrpack13\cds\multi_memdisk\disk1\isolinux\isolinx.cfg, changing append initrd=tomsrtbt.img to append initrd=coyote2.img. You can also modify isolinux.cfg with other changes, such as timeout, default, display message when CD booting, other bootable images, etc.

- 2nd Step
[Location: Linux/Cygwin]
Now create a folder in your hard drive and extract all the tgz's inside. Create another folder inside the folder you've created named root and extract the root.tgz inside. Move the others tgz's files to the folder root. Now go tho to root/var/lib/lrpkg/ and edit the root.linuxrc file. Now change the following lines:

[126]if [ -f $MNT/$f.tgz ]; then
to:if [ -f /$f.tgz ]; then

[131]zcat $MNT/$f.tgz | qt tar -x
to:zcat /$f.tgz | qt tar -x

[154]if [ -f $MNT/$f.tgz ]; then
to:if [ -f /$f.tgz ]; then

[156]qt zcat $MNT/$f.tgz > /dev/null
to:qt zcat /$f.tgz > /dev/null

Now extract the file syslinux.cfg from the image and open it. Change the parameter:boot=/dev/fd0
to:boot=/

- 3rd Step
[Linux/Cygwin]
Now enter the root folder and compress all the files using tgz-like tool creating a new root.tgz.
[Windows]
After all that put the files you'd changed back into the image file using the WinImage and save it. And copy it to the cds/multi_memdisk/disk1/isolinux folder on the MultiMemDisk folder.
Go to the MultiMemDisk folder and enter the cds/multi_memdisk/disk1/isolinux and alter the isolinux.cfg and the bootmsg as you like. After that go back to the MultiMemDisk folder and type "run" to burn your CD-R, follow the intructions and all should be fine !!! :-))))

PS1: If you are using WindowsXP generate a image file with de MultiMemDisk and burn it to the CD using a Nero-like software.